The idea is to always ask high and then work your way down from that. BM here asked for ridiculous things from DH and got pretty much nothing she demanded.

I will never understand why a person would wait four years to file for a divorce. So basically he has the kids, pays her alimony so she can run around the country with her boyfriend on his dime?? That makes ZERO sense to me. I would have filed a long time ago, made sure I had custody of the kids.
I assume he makes quite a bit more money than she does on disability. However, I would think that if he has the kids, alimony for her would be limited.

Why do you want to jump into his mess? Let me guess...you LOOOOVE him. :sick:

You should really just butt out and let him and his WIFE deal w/their issues. Why are you in the picture anyway? He's still legally married.

Go find yourself a nice single guy honey.

In my state alimony is highly unlikely as is lawyer fees. Child support is very likely as is joint legal. If he's had majority custody for years now then he has a good chance of getting 50:50 (week on/week off; 2-2-3) as well. Personally DH has week days and BM has every weekend as their version of "joint"custody except in the summer when it's week on/week off.

Guys who live apart from their wives and don't file for divorce for FOUR years all while having girlfriends who clean, cook
and babysit for them are not good candidates for life partners. You need to run. Find someone better.

I'm sorry but I hope your SO has legal representation to fight it if BM wants to be nasty....

To directly answer your question-

The courts do not care what expenses he has or what his costs are. They don't care if you are dumpster diving to survive on his current income. All they care about is making sure his ex wife is supported if the length of the marriage means he owes alimony, and making sure his children are supported if his ex wife is awarded custody of them.

Unfortunately the current laws support legal slavery. If he is unable to fulfill his financial obligations to his ex, he will have his license suspended, his passport taken and if he continues not to pay he will be thrown in jail.

To make this even worse-- If his income changes from whatever it currently is, childsupport will be modified upward, meaning if he gets a second job because you cant afford to live after his payments are taken out, he would need to pay even more because the income from the second job would count into the calculation. Also, if he loses his current income AFTER the case is concluded, it is possible that they court may disregard this, and continue to require him to pay CS at his current amount.

My boyfriend ran into a situation where his ex threw him out and completely stopped allowing him to see his child, then filed for sole custody. He worked through the pain by temporarily taking an assignment that required 40 hours of overtime a week and that had him living out of hotels which paid per diem pay each week in addition to the 40 hours he already worked and 40 hours of overtime. This tripled his income, he had a 30k a year job that was paying him 90k a year because of what he was putting into it because he didn't want to deal with life. But he was working 80 hours a week and living out of hotels in various cities which nobody can sustain for long periods. The attorney told us that if it went to court like that, not only would the ex have gotten sole custody because the fathers job had him unavailable, but there was a possibility that he could have been required to pay CS based on his 80hr a week income, which would have forced him to work 80 hours a week for the next 15 years, as his CS amount would have been based on an income of almost 100k a year and would have exceeded the amount in his normal 40 hour paycheck.

In order to protect him, we convinced his employer to pull him from the assignment and switch him to part time work and write a letter that they wanted him to attend school to further his career. He signed up as a full time college student in addition to the 15 hours he continued working at his job. He also purchased the most expensive health insurance for himself that he could find, which in my state is deducted from his earnings for the support calculation. When it went to trial he ended up with 40% custody. The ex, who doesn't work at all, ended up owing him child support even though she has more overnights than he does. Now of course, this left him with no money and a lot of legal fees so he had to switch to cheaper insurance and pick up more hours. She can theoretically take him back to court at any time to have the CS adjusted based on the changes, so he would then owe her something, but not nearly as much as he would have owed if we hadn't done anything.

So--- I would advise your boyfriend to reduce his income in ways that do not appear voluntary, he can't just quit his job or start working at mcdonalds instead. But this is a great time to reduce his hours to go back to school and also his last opportunity to go to school before his kids are 18. (They will not reduce his CS if he decides to go back later) Check to see if health insurance reduces income in your state, and if it does he should temporarily sign up for the best insurance he can find. Worst case scenario, none of it works and they use his previous income, so make sure he can drop his classes resume full time work and switch his insurance back if things go south.

Document all of BM's antics. text messages, emails, anything you can to prove she has not been around for the kids. Document anything you can showing his involvement with the children. The best protection against enslavement by your ex is custody of the children.

It was because he had always planned on finishing his BA, but he worked when he was with her while BM went to school and the deal was that when she finished school, he would go. She finished right after she dumped him. When the court thing started he found out that if didn't register right that second regardless of finances and the situation, he would never be able to afford to go while still making the CS payments. After the case is complete, he cant reduce his hours anymore and he certainly wouldn't have extra left over for tuition and books even if he could manage 40 hours together with fulltime coursework. Also CS payments don't count in financial aid calculations, so even if he was taking home very little or nothing because of what he had to pay her, he still wouldn't qualify for assistance..

But yes, it did work strongly to his advantage and is a strategy that someone who is trying to avoid CS may be able to use. Just cutting your hours won't work, but cutting hours and then adding full time college sometimes will.

Also, I just want to point out that this has nothing to do with him refusing to "support his child". He was the primary caretaker when they were together because she was out doing drugs and partying and he wanted full custody due to her instability, not to mention her perverse sexual behaviors with other men that she started bringing the child around but she had the advantage. She had the house, she had possession of the kid, and she was making up false allegations about domestic violence and child abuse left and right and trying to get 100% with no visitation rights whatsoever for him. She denied paternity, she did all kinds of crap to delay court hearings left and right to try to make 100% sole for her the status quo in the hopes the judge wouldn't see the need to give him anything. My boyfriend couldn't see his son for eight months while all this was pending because she wouldn't allow it. (Flat out wouldn't allow it, a bunch of no you can't see him followed by a bunch of threats to call the police if he contacted her again followed by simply ignoring all phone calls emails and text messages.) And yes, during this time he was voluntarily sending her money for 100% of the kids expenses, even when she stopped asking for it insisting he sign over his rights instead combined with cajolery and threats. After he finally got temporary orders for supervised visitation after 8 months of nonsense, the child was clearly traumatized from what the mother had done, having severe panic attacks and tantrums every time dad left the room.

He certainly wasn't going to lose custody of his child due to the lies of his psychotic ex and then voluntarily pay her large amounts of money every month for the privilege if worst came to worst. It's not really about supporting your kid when the child in question has essentially been legally kidnapped by the other parent, as unmarried mother's have all the rights and a massive advantage in court even when they're not making up false abuse allegations. I would think child support should be for people who don't want to take care of or participate in raising their children and would prefer to place that burden on the other parent, not for those who have had their children kidnapped by the courts and the ex and now must pay the kidnapper.

I know nothing of alimony. Its child support legislation that is pretty draconian.